Shifting Shadows
by Wolf-Kin
Summary: Post HotU For Caylassa, the adventure is over. But for Kelia, left to die in the Hells, it’s only just begun. One Shifter's journey for truth, revenge, and most importantly, home.
1. Prologue: Shadows of Deception

Disclaimer: I own nothing, characters or concepts, that isn't mine by right of orignial characters/ideas.

A/N: This is fair warning: I'm not going to be able toupdate this very quickly, but I do want to see what people think of it...so tell me. Love it or hate it, leave me a review: constructive criticism is welcomed; how else will I know what I'm doing right or wrong?

And as always: Enjoy.

* * *

Kelia hugged her upper arms, teeth chattering so loudly she was worried she would attract unwanted attention. She couldn't even see her breath lift up from her mouth anymore, even her thick cloak scant protection from the bitter cold. It was, she mused with a slight up-turning of her numbed lips at the irony, as cold as hell. Cania, one of the planes making up Baator, the Nine Hells, to be precise. She couldn't believe she was still here; if things had gone according to plan, she would be back home in Waterdeep by now…or any other place on the Sword Coast, for that matter. She could feel the tears well up in her gray eyes, mostly because they threatened to freeze. Shaking her head from side to side, she banished them, shivering as she burrowed deeper into her cloak. Tears were a luxury she couldn't afford to indulge in, not now. Not after…. 

_Don't think of it_, she commanded herself as she turned her gaze out across the frozen wastes of Cania, the small nook she'd found in the side of a cliff providing her with protection from the bitter wind. It was still cold enough to hurt, deep down in her bones, but she couldn't think clearly enough to figure out a way out of this.

She snorted to herself, glancing out over the small whirlwinds of snow that rose and fell with the fickle winds. Who wouldn't be at a loss, after…? _No, I'm not going to think of it,_ she repeated as she lowered her head into her hands. Betrayal: worse than murder. Murder: far better than what had occurred back there. She didn't think that there was anything worse in all the multiverse than what she had been forced to witness. _And that's saying something; even the Hells and the Abyss are included in the multiverse…_Perhaps she was delirious with the shock of everything; she didn't care.

The cold was deceptive: now painful, jolting as lightning, agonizing; now lulling, numbing, every sense, every thought. Despite her resolve not to think, Kelia found her glazed gaze traveling over the drop-off of the plains, towards the City of Lost Souls. Even as cold and as tired and as flat-out _dead_ as she felt, her throat still close up. It had happened there….Despite her best efforts to keep her mind off the painful events of – last week? last month? yesterday? She had no good way of knowing how much time had passed – Kelia's mind wandered back to that time and place. She could see all four of them as clearly as if she stood above them, watching the events unfold once more….

* * *

She had always tagged along at the rear of their little group, and this time was no different; even the kobold bard Deekin scurried in front of her. She liked it that way; she could take her time to size up a situation before running blindly into it like Valen or Caylassa…She rolled her eyes even as she grinned; she would never be able to deal the damage they did, anyways. At least staying to the back of the group gave her time to prepare herself for battle…

Kelia cast an appreciative gaze towards the leader of their little group, striding at the front, eyes fixed on their goal; the portal to the Reaper's Realm. Caylassa's golden hair seemed to glow, even in the scant light of the Hells, not the tawdry yellow of a true blond, but like unto the precious metal itself, a gleam all its own. Though Caylassa's back was to her, Kelia could still imagine the tall female's warm light brown eyes, the color of good whiskey, the slight smile that curved her full lips, the proud arch of her nose and sweep of her cheeks, the stubborn set of her chin. A beautiful face, strong beauty. Her silvery and bronze armor was splattered with blood both old and recent; there had been no time these frenzied days to clean up after a battle. It was fight and run, run and fight, on and on. They had been desperate to escape the Hells, so desperate that they hadn't taken the time to camp each night as they usually did. There was a perpetual light of distraction in Caylassa's eyes, her slim pale hand resting on the hilt of her sword even as she slept.

Not that any of her other companions were less agitated in this plane. Though they looked to Caylassa as their leader – Deekin and Valen and her – they were used to acting on their own, scouting out potential paths and opponents before the full group moved anywhere. They all were preoccupied with whatever they had found in the day's scouting to be too interested in conversation at night.

But now, so close to their goal of escaping from the Hells, Caylassa drew to a halt and turned to face all of them, a gleam in her eyes as she looked them over. Her voice was low and melodious, "Well…we've seem to come to the end of our adventures in the Hells." She paused, head half-canted, listening with a slight smile to the comments of Deekin and Valen's interjections. When the excitable kobold was through, she continued with a toss of her glorious hair, "There are a few things I'd like to finish up before we face Mephistopheles. Business." Her smile seemed a bit…stretched – not forced, just…different – as she turned to Deekin. "Ixthyria the Scalesinger," her voice dropped to a purr, her eyes flashing with some unnamed emotion.

"Deekin's True Name! Whats it you want me to be doing, boss?" the kobold bard was almost jumping up and down in eagerness. But Kelia had an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach…she didn't like the look in Caylassa's eyes. Without even knowing why, she started to slip away from the cluster, reaching behind her to touch the cold, ice coated stones of the cliff face in reassurance. It would be fine. Caylassa was always helping people; giving money to the poor, donating to various temples, taking no reward for her actions…she wouldn't abuse the power of a True Name…would she?

"Surrender your soul to me, little one!"

Kelia quite literally felt her heart stop in her chest. The gleam in Caylassa's eyes…she knew it now. It was triumph. Fierce triumph. The same look she got in her eyes whenever the battle swung in her direct favor and became not a battle but a massacre, when she could kill with ease. And oh, how she had enjoyed such massacres! Kelia had been blind not to see it: blind, to travel with the tall female for two full years and not see how she loved killing when the enemy was exponentially weaker than she was. Panic rose in her chest, and she thought no further than the next moment. If that was what Caylassa did to Deekin, who had always been loyal to her, never questioning her wishes, what would she do to her?

She thought no further; there was no time to. Her body was already Shifting, not a thought needed to change her form, not after so much practice – her bones cracking, flesh squelching, bolts of pain shooting up her limbs at the speed of it all. She concentrated all her thoughts on completing the Shift as fast as possible, forcing her body into the smallest rat she could manage, and scurried for a crack in the ice wall. Only when she was safe with ice brushing her fur on three sides did she look back at the scene.

The eyes of a rat weren't good, not compared to anything else she'd been. But even she could see the pile of gray dust that had once been Deekin, dark against the blinding snow. She was grateful that rats couldn't cry. But, oh gods, could rats hear. She could hear every word, every inflection of tone, every soft, cruel laugh and every growl. She had to guess at facial expressions, but now that all had been revealed…she could guess. She could guess at the shining light in Caylassa's eyes, equal parts evil – she hated to think of _her_ Caylassa as evil, but all the evidence pointed that way now – and lust. She could imagine the hatred in Valen's lightning blue eyes.

She heard every blithe word as Caylassa bound Valen's love to her, forced him to love her for eternity.

"So be it... my love. Your mastery over me knows no bounds. Should I ever free myself, however...I will kill you. Trust me on that," Valen's words were once more distrustful and hate-filled, just as they had been when Caylassa – and Kelia, for that matter – arrived at the Seer's camp in the Underdark. _Those were the days, weren't they?_ The thoughts seemed loud for her little rat mind. _The days of seeking out potential allies and weakening enemies…_

Caylassa laughed, tossing her hair over her shoulder, "You will never get free, Valen. Never. Now, where is Kelia…?" There was a pause, then she shouted, "Salazogan the Dragonspeaker! Come out!"

Kelia closed her eyes, trembling like the rat she now was, waiting for a tug on her soul as her True Name took effect…but there was nothing. Nothing. She opened first one eye, then the other, staring out at the white blur. "Salazogan!" Caylassa repeated, puzzlement in her tone. Then there was the crunch of snow underfoot as she turned on her heel, muttering, "Little snit must be out of hearing by now…no matter. The Hells will take care of that Shifter. Come, Valen; I have a throne to win."

* * *


	2. Ch 1: Shadows of Memory

A/N: Well, this is faster than I expected I'd update, but then, I'm not sure how long it'll be until I get a chance for the next chapter. Or even where the next chapter breaks, for that matter - you'll notice that this one is considerably longer than the previous chapter. I'm not sure if this should be a standard length or not - certainly, it _could_ be, as I tend not to worry about chapters and where the breaks should go until I'm updating.

Anyways, to those who reviewed, thank you: reviews always make my day. Please give me your thoughts regarding this chapter as well - anything from gut reactions to an analysis of my writing style, I don't care; I can't improve if I don't know what I'm doing wrong, after all. Still, as always: Enjoy.

* * *

In her little nook in the ice wall, Kelia's gray eyes closed, arms folded over her knees, head resting on her wrists, her mind wandering, numbed even further by the cold. It had stopped hurting, she noted distantly. Her bones had stopped hurting…she must be well on her way to being walled in with ice…did it matter any more?

Her thoughts returned to that time not so long ago, when they were trapped in the Underdark…It was as if she was transported back, back to all the best times, and the worst. She relived everything, as she had so many times before. She did not try to focus on Caylassa as she usually did, seeking to puzzle out where the female had 'gone bad,' tried to see if hints of her true nature had ever showed. No, she focused on _herself_, and watched with new eyes all her actions.

* * *

She crouched just at the top of the cliff, peering down at the group of drow camped in the small cavern just ahead. Behind her, the kobold bard Deekin, the tiefling warrior Valen, and her closest friend, the human female Caylassa, waited in the twisting passageway below for her report. She leaned closer to the edge, squinting against the shadows, wishing all the while that she could Shift a single part of her body at a time…how convenient would it be, to Shift her eyes to that of an owl's or panther's now! 

"One," she whispered to herself, eyes flicking around the campsite, "three… eight… twelve… hell-hound…Damn."

She began to slide away from the cliff's edge, then paused. Something drew her back to her post, and she tilted her head, trying to get a better angle…and she hissed through her teeth as two more drow warriors paced below in the shadow of the wall. "Fourteen," she corrected beneath her breath. "Fourteen Red Sisters, and a hell-hound." She nodded to herself, then turned and ran across the flat top of the cliff, her leather calf-high moccasins making no noise on the stones. She kept herself hunched over, moving with the shadows, just to be on the safe side.

She threw herself flat as she drew up next to a specific stalagmite, the looped rope around its base half-hidden by shadows. She reached down, and gave it two sharp tugs, then whistled softly. That was all the warning she gave before she swarmed down the rope, hand over hand, feet hanging limp so as not to be in her way. As soon as she felt solid earth beneath one toe, she dropped the rest of the way, already reporting, "Fourteen Red Sisters, and a hell-hound." She turned, glancing at the golden haired female studying her with settled amber eyes, "I counted at least two clerics in that number, most of the rest warriors, but it's hard to tell for certain. They're entrenched in a cave up ahead…can't say for sure if they're waiting for…someone, or if its just bad luck on our part."

Caylassa nodded, then turned her gaze forward, to the passage leading to the indicated camp, as if seeing the battle before her, a thoughtful frown tugging her full lips, "If we draw some of them off…." she broke off mid-sentence and turned back to Kelia, "Did you scout the rest of the area?"

She was forced to shake her head, "No, I saw the drow camp and thought it best to let you know of the danger."

Her leader nodded acceptance, "Go now. Remember: keep to the shadows and­ –"

"– and don't be seen, I know, I _know_, Caylassa," Kelia interrupted, "I'm not an inept child; I've done this many times before."

Caylassa arched a sculpted eyebrow, "Don't. Be. Arrogant."

Kelia grinned, knowing full well that her teeth had already Shifted and were sharp little points. She got the gasp of shock and disgust she was aiming for, and twitched her nose just as it rumpled upward, the rest of the Shift flowing down her body from head to toe. She fluttered her black wings, and began to wing her way up through the shadows cast below the lofty ceiling of the cavern.

Her decent eyesight had been exchanged for better night vision, but weak on details and fuzzy around the edges. However, her hearing more than made up for it. She heard every murmur from every creature down below, every drip of every drop of water dropping from stalactites to stalagmites, every whisper of wind flowing throughout the tunnels of the Underdark. And thus, by emitting high pitched squeaks only she could hear and listening to the way the echoes bounced before returning, she learned the fine details, more than Caylassa or Valen would have guessed. Glass rang in her ears while stone was muted, not as sharp or as clear a tone. The wings of the elves below were even softer, but there was an oily overtone to them, as if they had not touched the sky in many long years. _Interesting…_

She made a slow turn around the caverns, then a second, picking up more details. She was intrigued by this strange village, especially… _Now how did a full fledged castle and a wizard's tower get down here? And smoke coming up from what I'd guess is a library…Caylassa will want to know this…_

Kelia swung around and began the flight back to her companions, not bothering to stay to the shadows as Caylassa had ordered; who would notice one black bat against all the others of the Underdark? She might not know what to make of the strange town, but she knew the others would….

* * *

That had typical mission for her. She had fought the mind flayers and the golems and countless times against the Red Sisters, especially when the Valsharess attacked, but she had little to do with the planning of those battles; she had gone where she was told and she fought where they told her to, just like any good foot soldier. That's all she had ever been. An extremely versatile foot soldier, but still just a foot soldier, looking to her officers for orders. And she hadn't even minded! Caylassa had told her to risk her life many times – volunteering to be taken by the vampiric cult, run interference against the never-ending golem hoard while Caylassa sought a particular book – and she had gladly gone forth. She had been so sure that Caylassa _was_ what she appeared to be; kind and true and…_good_. She had _trusted_ Caylassa. 

How could one person be so opposite to the mask they wore? How could they have kept that mask in place at all moments, never slipping, never breaking the façade they made for themselves? How could she have never seen those moments when Caylassa _did_ drop the mask? _Perhaps…perhaps because I _was_ so sure that she was the mask, I didn't notice when it slipped? Or if I did, I attributed it to nerves or a bad day or that time of month…_ Still, Kelia didn't understand how she could have been strung along so easily. She thought she _knew_ people, could look at one and tell for sure what they wanted in life and how they would go about getting it. How could she have failed so miserably with Caylassa?

Damn, she felt like a fool a hundred times over! A fool to follow without questioning. A fool to turn a blind eye to those 'off days.' A fool to worship the ground her leader walked upon. A fool never to take a second look at the plans Caylassa formed; looking back, she saw that she had been commanded to do horrible, evil things: slip into the House Maeviir and murder the Matron Mother Myrune: play both sides of the rebelling golems….Often a confused thought would trail across her mind as she did as she was ordered, wondering why this was necessary…but she would do it.

What disgusted her was not that she _did_ such things, but that she did them just because she was ordered to, and not even because Caylassa held her True Name, not then, anyways…she really had been a sheep. Eager to please, eager to do anything to earn Caylassa's favor…what really disgusted her was the fact that she…she had once saved Caylassa's life…

* * *

Her nose twitched, flesh crawling and twitching beneath her black fur. At the…strong recommendation of Caylassa, she had taken to bat form once more and was fluttering around the corners of the ceiling. The difference was that this time, she was in an actual cave…the Hive of Beholders, to be exact. She spun out a web of squeaks and clicks, dodging around the hanging spiked stalactites, heaving a sigh in her mind alone. She had _meant_ to follow Caylassa close behind from the air, she really did! But it had taken her awhile to get her bearings, awhile to remember how to interpret the echoes. They had already pressed on by the time she had figured out what she was hearing. 

She sent out another burst of clicks and squeaks, ears rotating to pinpoint every sound. If she was right – and she prayed to every deity she could think of that she was – then the cavern of the Beholder Tyrant should be…

Dead ahead.

She burst into the huge round cave, and angled her thin wings up, hugging the ceiling as so many beholders were doing. The barrage of eyebeams they spat out, not to mention the spells from the beholder mages, confused her sense of direction. She spent several minutes flying in circles around the ceiling, dodging beholders as they appeared in her blurry sight, trying to reorient herself. At last she was able to focus back on listening to echoes, some produced by her, others not.

The battle was going badly. To put it mildly.

There were eight other beholders in the cave besides the Tyrant, not counting those hanging limp from the ceiling, just waiting to drop down and replace any of their fallen brethren. At least four of them had concentrated on Valen. The weapons-master was giving an amazing account of himself, whirling attacks keeping the beholders from surrounding him completely, wounding several at once. But even he could not avoid all of their eye-beams, and the protective enchantments they had placed on themselves could only do so much. Slowly, steadily, his life was being drained from him, one small cut at a time.

The other four – no, five; she saw the last pull away from Deekin's limp body and drift over to the group – had surrounded Caylassa. She was having less luck than Valen, but she was focusing her attention on the huge Tyrant, perhaps assuming that with the leader dead, the others might just be thrown into chaos. The Tyrant loomed above the leader of the small group, leering from all of its eyes, sharp teeth drawing every closer….Even as Kelia circled, mind racing, trying to figure out how she could help, Caylassa was driven to her knees by one of the eye beams, reeling and gasping for breath, hand trembling so hard she lost her grip on her sword.

The clatter of steel on stone snapped Kelia out of her confusion. She didn't think further, driven with worry for Caylassa's life, but fluttered above the Tyrant itself. She closed her eyes, hovering a moment as she concentrated. Then she forced herself from one form straight into another – usually she switched back to her human form, then to another wild shape. She went from flying to falling in a heartbeat, but she was unafraid. Her lithe form twisted about even as it fell, instincts kicking in, until she was braced for impact, legs relaxed, ready to absorb the shock from her landing…

She hit the back of the Tyrant's head hard, biting frantically at the nearest eyestalks, front paws sinking into the clammy flesh of the aberration to hold herself tight to her prey, muscular back legs raking, vicious claws extended to dig deep into the over-grown head. She felt her claws slip in the blood of the vile thing, and kept up her efforts, quite literally digging a hole in the back of the Tyrant. _I wonder how tough the skull is…_She mused as she felt one of her back claws rack over tougher cartilage, _If it even has a skull; seems pretty fleshy to me…WHOA!_

At that moment, the Tyrant had decided that it had enough of the annoyance on its back and was going to be rid itself of the pain. The closest description to what it did was that it bucked; tossing its massive head from side to side, it sought to throw off its attacker, tried in vain to get it – Kelia – in front of the eyebeams of one of its kin…

Kelia flattened her black ears to her head and dug in deeper, hooking her claws to keep herself from being tossed into the air like a ball. Whirling round and round, she soon lost track of which way was up; closing her gold eyes, she focused on keeping her lunch where it belonged. Crazed by the pain and the foe it could not see – a rarity for a beholder – the Tyrant twisted and turned and threw itself forward and back, the smaller beholders backing away, lest they were crushed against unforgiving stone walls…

The next thing Kelia knew, a shudder racked the Tyrant, and then it sank to the floor, never to hover again. Two more powerful blows rained down on the Tyrant, but Kelia knew, just from the way the blood stopped spurting out from the severed arteries and began to pulse, that the Tyrant was dead at last. Still, she was wary as she slitted open a single golden eye, checking to be sure that there was solid rock beneath her before unhooking her claws from the dead flesh. Coagulating greenish blood clung to her black fur as she twisted around, leaping down with grace she never quite managed in her normal form.

Valen prodded the main eye of the Tyrant, now lidded in death, with the tip of his flail handle. He glanced up at her as she padded around the side of the fallen beholder, black pelt melding into the shadows, then turned his intense blue gaze back to the fallen Tyrant. Just as she had hoped, the rest of the beholders, seeing their leader dead, leapt up into the shadows of the ceiling to regroup – an annoying tactic, but one she was thankful for now; it gave them time to catch their breath.

"Kelia! What in the name of the gods _possessed you?_!" Caylassa had recovered from the paralyzing attack, getting to her feet with the help of her longsword. Kelia cringed at the rebuke, the servile motion not suited to her proud feline form. She couldn't answer, not without Shifting back, and she felt far safer as a graceful black panther. "I told you to stay out of battle! You didn't have any of the enchantments we had! You could have been killed!"

Well, she couldn't just leave _that_ one lie. She flowed out of the feline form, the green blood transferring from black fur to tanned skin. Shaking her head, she pointed out, "_You_ were about to be killed! Did you think I would just watch that happen!"

Caylassa snarled outright. Kelia interpreted it as worry. "You _disobeyed_ me. And the Beholder Tyrant was far stronger than you! If Valen hadn't intervened when he did…If I hadn't weakened it first…"

Surprisingly, it was Valen himself who interjected; he had never paid much attention to Kelia. He walked over to the fallen Tyrant once again, using the handle of his fail to indicate a few slashes just beneath the main eye, "Yours," his voice was settled and calm as he moved to indicate the chunks of flesh taken out on the other side, "Mine." Then he put his back into rolling it over, "Hers."

Even Kelia was amazed at the sheer amount of _damage_ her claws had done. The wound was like a crater on some small moon, bone showing through in many places, arteries severed, and veins as well, from the way the wound still oozed clear plasma and green blood. Several of the rear most eyestalks had been severed at the base as well, hanging limply, clouded over long before death. But she had known that – she _had_ bitten the eyestalks off, after all. She was still impressed by how easily her claws had shredded the Tyrant's flesh.

Caylassa was silent a long time, staring at the gaping wounds, eyes flicking from the dead Beholder to Kelia and back again. Even she could not deny that the Shifter had more than pulled her weight. Perhaps she would have said more, but the lesser Beholder that dropped in front of her broke her musings, "Heads up! Kel," she didn't turn her head as she addressed the younger human by nickname alone, "Take the Rod of Resurrection from the back of my belt and use it on Deekin, then Shift to your most powerful form and help us!"

"To hear is to obey, oh fearless leader!" she sang back even as she snatched the slim white and silver rod from where it rested against the small of Cay's back. She slunk back towards the prone form of the little kobold, grinning from ear to ear; for once, she would fight!

* * *

How proud she had been…from then on, Caylassa had acknowledged that in the right circumstances, she could be quite deadly. She had been allowed to fight – not on the front lines, of course, but more than just the small skirmishes she got into while scouting. True, pure animal forms weren't the best for dealing with armored drow and magical creatures of the Underdark, but she did what she could and never complained, no matter how bloody or hurt she was at the end of the day. She had been proud to help. 

_Hindsight: should have let her get killed. _She couldn't help but smile, even as stiff as her lips felt. If she could change the past…ah, but if such wishes were horses, then every beggar would ride.

She found her thoughts wandering back to the tiefling warrior who had traveled with them for so long. He had been…courteous to her, once Caylassa had convinced him that neither human was going to betray the Seer. Courteous, but distant…far more taken up with Caylassa…she felt her nails bite into her palms in spite of herself. Those two had twined around each other like a pair of cooing lovebirds…after they had stopped wanting to rip out the other's throat, that is. She had caught but a few words of their conversations, but even that was enough to make her want to vomit at the oozing saccharine in their words.

Kelia blinked. She hadn't thought that before…she had thought it lovely, romantic. She had cheered Caylassa on, in fact! Perhaps that was what disgusted her; now that she saw the truth of their leader, she saw Cay's flirtation as disgusting, a full-fledged deception. Or perhaps the Hells were getting to her; she had toyed with that thought: that perhaps the Hells had a dark influence on Caylassa, bringing out and enhancing what had been just a shadow in her.

Or maybe it was because she was half-in-love with the tiefling herself.

She winced as she admitted the private thought for the first time. It was true, however; Valen had accompanied them wherever they went in the Underdark, and she had grown to like what she saw of him. _Especially from the back…_She banished all thoughts of his swaying, sinuous tail from her mind, the blush rising in her cheeks almost producing enough heat to warm her entire nook.

But of course, her thoughts turned sarcastic, she _had_ to let her closest friend have him, not even daring to sigh in wistful thinking in either of their presence. No, she had bowed out without a fight. _Clever, clever sheep,_ she mocked herself, _Like you would have ever stood a chance, not so long as Caylassa was standing next to you. Oh, but you never admitted that, you _couldn't_ admit it. To admit that Caylassa wasn't even giving you a fair chance, not even to yourself, would have been…disloyal._

But she did remember one time, just after the Valsharess' siege had been broken and the rebels moved on the offensive, that she'd had a chance to speak with Valen _without_ Caylassa hovering in the background. As a matter of fact…Caylassa had been fighting for her life in the Valsharess' fortress while the army was forced to wait outside, _One more reason to hate Mephistopheles; he let her live. Sent her to Cania and killed the rest of us, but thanks to that Reaper, at least we were allowed to return to life…if going on a forced march through the frozen wastes of Hell can be called 'life,' that is…_

With a sigh, her mind turned to the conversation in question, relishing the time she had spent with the warrior. She would never see him again, not if Caylassa the new lady of the Eighth Hell had her way, but at least she had her memories, for however long she lived.

* * *

"Kelia?" She looked up into the clear sapphire blue eyes of the tiefling weapon-master, startled. "Might we speak?" 

She nodded, shifting her legs on the broken-off stalagmite she'd been sitting on, offering him a seat, "Of course…but I thought you would have been with the other commanders planning out next move…?" she couldn't help but ask.

He shrugged as he sat next to her, long legs stretched out in front of him as he turned his gaze to the looming fortress of the Valsharess, "My opinions would do more harm than good; the commanders are already divided." Kelia glanced over her shoulder, and grinned at the sight of the drow commanders yelling at each other some distance away. "I had hoped we could speak of Caylassa."

She blinked, startled. "What of her?"

He was silent for a long moment, staring off at the looming fortress. "I am curious as to how you see…" he paused, searching for words above his head even as a tint of red began to stain the back of his neck. "That is, ah…her and I…"

It took a moment for her to realize just what he was speaking of. When she did, she couldn't stop a laugh, "Your relationship with her?" she supplied. When he nodded, the flush working its way up into his pale cheeks, she grinned, "I've been friends with her for five years now; why would I protest her happiness?"

He nodded, relieved, "Then you have no objections if I were to continue to travel with you three after this is all over?"

"Of course not," she reassured, touched that he would think to ask her opinion in the matter. It was her turn to hesitate over her words, then hurried forward with the first thing that came into her mind when the silence became awkward, "Have…have you seen much of the surface?"

"Some," he shrugged, "After I escaped from Grimash't…" he stopped abruptly, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, wary, "I am not sure how familiar you are with my personal history…"

"You mean you aren't sure how much Cay told me," she interrupted with a slow grin, then shook her head. "Caylassa told me the general story, yes, and I heard enough of your conversation with her to not want any of the details."

He nodded once more, and continued as if he had not interrupted himself, "After my escape from the Abyss, it took me years to find the Seer…years of wandering, much of it in this world. Though," he added thoughtfully, "I have never even seen a true city…"

"No?" she asked with an arched eyebrow. "That's too bad. I like the cities myself; there's always something going on, something happening…"

Valen twisted about to glance at her, then hurried to ask, "I'm planning on returning to the surface with Caylassa. To Waterdeep, your city. Perhaps…you could show me about? Cay has motioned that she is not fond of cities."

"Gods, we know," Kelia rolled her eyes with a half-laugh before nodding, "Of course; I'd love to."

"Excellent," he nodded, "having a guide who actually knows the place will be most fortuitous. I look forward to it. And perhaps…I could get better acquainted with you as well?" When she arched a second brow, he explained, "I feel that while I know almost everything about Cay, I know nothing about you, and I regret that."

She blinked. "Really?"

"Of course. If we are to be traveling together, it would be best to know more of you beyond your name and fighting style."

She glanced pointedly to where the commanders still argued over strategy, voices raising with every passing word, "Just a hunch, but we're going to be here for awhile. Ask whatever you feel like."

He seemed taken aback by her openness, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You say you have known Caylassa for five years now. How did you meet her?"

Kelia leaned back against the stalagmite, eyes seeing into the distance as if seeing the memory play out before her once more. "It was at Master Drogan's school for adventurers…" she gave him a brief description of what had once been her home, before the kobold attack, unsure of how much Cay had told him.

"She arrived not long after I did, already experienced in the way of battle…I think she had pity on me," she mused. To his questioning noise, she elaborated, "Shifting has always been hard for me; she was always so good at what she did, _flying_ through her lessons as I struggled to change one form for another…"

She sighed through her teeth, shrugging, "It took me years to get the hang of it, but once I did, Shifting was so freeing…I knew I had made the right choice, even when others suggested I give up and focus on becoming a druid. Caylassa had stuck around all those years, encouraging me and congratulating my successes, even though she had finished her training long ago…"

She would have said more, but at that moment, the ground began to tremble beneath her feet. She stood carefully, gaze turning towards the fortress, Valen at her side. Her nostrils flared instinctively, a reaction left over from the wolf from she'd spent most of the day in, but her human nose could catch no scent beyond a general ominous feel that any idiot could sense. She had just enough time to trade a puzzled look with Valen before the doors to the Valsharess' fortress was thrown open, and the archdevil strode out.

She was a fool once more; she Shifted to her powerful wolf form and sprinted for him, Valen at her side, flail gripped in his hands, an unearthly battlecry ripped from his throat. What she thought she could have done, she didn't know. Just that she was leaping for the devil's throat and he cuffed her out of the air and into the unforgiving stone cliffs ringing the Valsharess' fortress. With a whimper, she slid to the ground, blood spurting out of her cracked skull, eyesight fading. The last thing she saw before she died was Valen swinging his flail in front of the devil, determined to go down fighting; the demon blood in him would demand nothing less…And then she was gone.

* * *


	3. Ch 2: Shadows of Life

A/N: Okay, I know, I know: It's been some obscene number of months since I updated. But hopefully this chapter makes up for the wait! Originally, this was only the first half, then I realized that it was getting long, so I split it into two pieces...or so. I'm bad with chapter breaks, so if it seems abrupt...sorry.

As always, much thanks to those who reviewed in the past, and enjoy!

**_&&&&&_**

She couldn't remember what came after her death, Kelia mused as she slid into a deeper state as the cold ate away her life. Couldn't remember if she'd been sent to the realm of her god – wherever _that_ was – or a standard 'paradise' plane or maybe even one of the Hells…one minute she was staring at Valen fighting the devil wondering if he'd be strong enough, the next she was in blackness thinking nothing at all, and the next she was in the Reaper's Realm, having been called back to life by Caylassa.

_If only she had been content with her pets Valen and Deekin…if only I had survived where she had not…if only I had struck out on my own last year…if only…if only…_The two loneliest words in any language.

It was odd – she had felt so…peaceful when she was dead. No more fuss, no more worry, just…rest. She could live with an afterlife of rest. Or not live, as the case may be. She was sick of fighting, especially for someone who betrayed her in the worst way – betrayed her with their entire being. She just wanted…she wanted…

She wanted to die.

And why not? She had died once already, and it wasn't so bad. And since she was in the Hells with no good way to get out – none that she could think of, anyways, as Caylassa had kept the True Name of the Reaper a secret – she wouldn't survive long. Certainly, not long enough to find another way out…if she even _could_ find another portal…

How easy it would be to just close her eyes and let the cold seep into her bones and the ice cover the entrance of her nook and…and let herself go. After such a turbulent life, why couldn't she just die quietly, with a semblance of peace and dignity? She didn't want to struggle against the inevitable any longer; she didn't want to have her guts strewn over the wastes of Cania by some infernal creature, be it as simple and mundane as an ice trollor as hellish as a proper devil.

So easy to die. So easy. Just stop fighting. Stop dreaming, stop hoping. Just lie her head down and _die_, rest. She couldn't help herself, couldn't lash back against Cay, couldn't even summon up the energy to _care_. Not any more. She knew her soul, knew what she desired…didn't she?

_No._

She wasn't quite sure where the thought had come from – somewhere deep within her, from the moon-dark side of her soul, a side she hadn't even thought she'd had. And it bucked against the thought of just rolling onto her back and giving in without a fight. _But I _did_ fight_, she argued. _I've been fighting all my life, and I'm sick of it!_

'_All your life' that you can remember,_ the darkness snapped back – for the life in her, she could not even say if it was male or female, if it came from without or within. _Think back. You can only remember six years!_

It wasn't true, it couldn't be…

It _was_, she realized with a gasp.

The voice was right. Her first memory was arriving at Drogan's school, and even that was faint. Beyond that, she knew nothing. _What makes a person?_ The voice argued, softer now, _Their experiences. How can you be so sure you _would_ just roll onto your back and die if you can't remember more than half your life? No, your soul is strong, despite whatever your body tells you…_

It couldn't be so. Drogan had said…Caylassa had said…If she was strong than why couldn't she….No. It wasn't true. She _couldn't_ be what this…voice claimed she was. She couldn't stand on her own. Drogan had always said that she would never be able to Shift with great ease, nor become any magical creature, not even a dire rat! Though she had tried – oh, how she had tried to force her body to be something, _anything_ but a pure animal…but it was useless.

"_They said, they said,"_ the voice mocked, _Are you going to let _others _dictate your soul to you, or are _you _going to? Look beyond what everyone has told you, and see for yourself; are you what they _say_ you are, or are you what _**you are?**

_But aren't I exactly what they said? Just a weak Shifter…nothing less, but nothing more…Right? _

Now that she thought…in the lost city of the winged elves, while they were collecting the mirror shards, she had stumbled into something she shouldn't have…Namely, an evil temple dedicated to a goddess of sickness…She had been diseased, and forced to fight for her right to live against overwhelming odds. Five times she entered the arena, each time sickening further, forced to call on deeper and deeper reserves of strength.

Funny; she had never thought much about that last time in front of the priest, where she raised her head and hissed that she would go as far as she needed to. At the time, she had felt as though she was reaching deep to find some last drops of strength and had found a well of it…She had been pushed beyond a bright veil, and found herself flying when she should have fallen flat on her face.

_You see?_ The voice had tinges of laughter in it, shades of light, sparkling within the darkness, _You are stronger than you know: hidden within you there is strength, buried so deep you didn't even realize it was there. Or anyone else, for that matter._

No, there couldn't be, she denied it once more, her voice faltering. There was evidence that she could do something – how else could she have managed the dire wolf in the last trial? And the priest _had_ acknowledged her own strength – but she had been so far gone at that time, sick with the disease, that she couldn't remember much. Perhaps, when everything had been stripped from her, her last reservoir of strength had allowed her to do what she normally could not. And if that was true…

No. She threw her thoughts away from her; there was no point in getting her hopes up only to have them dashed once more. She had made up her mind – she breathed out, seeing the plume of her breath one last time, hovering as if frozen in the air, and then closed her eyes. She dropped her head atop her arms, curling up, and waited for death to come. She had made her choice…hadn't she?

_**&&&&&**_

In the cold pain of the Hell, it seemed as though she was taken to a different plane, another world. Not one any warmer, she noted with a snort, but not covered in snow. All was blackness around her, a single light shining down on her and…and a large crystal ball that hovered before her. _Ah, of course. I've lost my mind. _

She nodded to herself, satisfied with this explanation, and then turned her attention to the crystal. It was a beautiful thing, the white surface perfectly smooth, perfectly formed, except for the head of a howling wolf embossed onto it. She could see white fracture lines extending deep within to the core…which was just subtly darker than the rest, more opaque. She reached forward to touch it, but something restrained her hand.

**_This is the full moon, the Shifter's moon. And it is your soul as well_,** a voice boomed in her ears, familiar and not all in the same breath. A crack appeared in the crystal as it continued, **_You have been tested before, and you have not faltered._ _But now the Hells seek to break you. _**

And the ball – or moon, or whatever – began to shatter, cracks rippling out through the crystal, separating into many pieces, a few small ones along the edges already dropping to the blackness beneath her feet. **_Your core is of diamond – you will survive. But not all of you. This outside form that you have forged for yourself is weak; beautiful and graceful, but weak_**.

A single piece, near the base, slipped off, **_You are not weak. You cannot be what you have been. The Hells _will_ break you…break the woman you know as you, and leave your soul, your true soul, in her place. _**The piece flashed in the light before falling down, lost in the darkness that surrounded her feet. **_A Shifter must always know their soul, for the body changes, flows into new shapes at will. You cannot base yourself on the outward, on everything said around you, to you, about you._**

A full layer of the crystal ball cracked down the center and peeled off, like the shell of a nut, falling so slowly. **_You must look inward, for only there can you see the truth. The truth that comes from _you_, from your own heart and soul._** Beneath that first layer, the second shattered into dust, and she could almost see the planes and facets of the diamond beneath what was left of the now-lopsided crystal.

_Almost gone now…_It felt like she was watching the process from afar, removed from it all. Somewhere within her, she felt pieces of herself be ripped from their bed like rotten teeth and flung off into the night. She tried to probe the empty spaces, but couldn't even say what was gone. In these few bitter minutes, she was being remade…no. _Awakened_.

The very last shard of crystal trembled in protest, just above the diamond, fighting to hold out, but then it snapped off, gone in the blink of an eye. **_There…it is done. What you are, you are because of your soul, not because someone told you that is what you are. You are not weak unless you, in the depths of your soul, find yourself weak. They sought to confine you, a Shifter's child and a Shifter in your own right. But they have failed. The block on your memories is broken. See the truth for yourself. And decide who you are._**

**_&&&&&_**

Apparently, something else had made the choice for her; she was still alive, in spite of the hells determination to see her dead and her own acceptance of her fate. She was frozen, granted, and numbed, but she wasn't dead, not even after having given up. _Huh. Odd…_

Kelia lifted her head from her arms, and raised one hand up to the back of her neck, where her hair still held some warmth close to her neck. Her fingers were numbed, so cold that she couldn't wiggle them, and for whatever odd reason, that annoyed her. She buried her fingers in her russet-colored hair…

...and froze when she touched a smooth lump on the back of her neck.

_What in the Hells…that didn't come out right…_She rubbed the lump, prodding it. It flowed off into her palm, reforming into a small ball, about half the size of her little finger. She frowned as she examined it; it glowed with a soft, white light, but it was streaked with bands of color, diagonally. Bright red and blue and pale green and black: many, many bands of black.

_Soulgem_._ My soulgem. Good,_ she thought idly, the cold slowing even her thoughts, making her drift into a state of half-sleep, half-trance. _Wondered when it would show up…Waitaminute! Wake up Kel!_

How did she know what it was? And why did she _know_, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that not only was it important, but vital, as much a part of her as her limbs? She didn't even know where the word had come from…any more than she knew…where the vision had come from. The vision that had broken off pieces of her soul and showed her the diamond strength within her core.

_But this isn't a diamond…So what is it? My soulgem, obviously, but…Okay, wrong emphasis: What _is_ it?_ _Why do I even _have_ it?_ There was…something in that thought, that question. Something _very_ important. It tapped at the back of her eyelids like a bird tapping on a pane of glass, insistent. But what…? She closed her eyes in concentration, the image of the paradoxically white and colored molten pearl before her mind…

And then it shifted, just slightly – the soulgem still hovered in front of her eyes, but a pair of warm brown eyes joined it, a slow, rich laugh sounding in her ears. She felt oddly detached from it, the cold taking its toll, perhaps, or maybe….It didn't _feel_ like the Hells, come to think of it; it didn't seem like this was taking place _now_. _But if not now, then…?_

Whatever it was tugged her along, distracting her from her thoughts. "And my gift to thee," a soft masculine voice murmured, soft but clear, and yet not within her ear at all, but somehow, in her mind, and yet…not. Before she could come to a satisfactory conclusion as to how that would be, it grabbed her in its tow again, the sentence completing itself, "is the greatest gift a Shifter can receive. Look upon thy soul, little Kel!"

And she was looking upon it, and knew that this moment was solemn and shouldn't be disturbed, but it was so pretty, shiny and not all in the same moment, and so she leapt up and snatched it from huge gentle hands. But it didn't…it didn't feel like _her_ doing it, not Kelia, who had been Drogan's student. Someone else jumped up and grabbed that pearl, but she saw it happen as though _she_ were doing it…. She didn't understand. She _knew_ she knew this, knew that this was vital to her, but how could _she_ be doing it and at the same time, not?

Whatever had control of her mind tugged her along again, sliding her back into the narrative: Someone behind her gasped, the sharp intake of breath that signaled a scolding was coming, but the big voice just laughed, voice rolling like a cauldron of water boiling, and so nothing more was said, and she turned her attention back to the pretty gem. It rolled over her palm, then slipped between her littlest finger and the ring finger, never breaking contact with her skin. And it never would.

She heard more voices, distantly, but was unable to make out any of the words, just a concerned tone. The big gentle voice spoke again, softly, words she wasn't meant to hear but did nevertheless, "Yes, usually I give it when they are _much_ older. But she will soon have need of it. Is she not a Shifter's Child, and from a most ancient line?"

She blinked, and lost the thread of the…memory. Memory...

_Oh, sweet, merciful gods above _and_ below…_She _remembered_ getting her soulgem the day she turned four years old. And he was right, the familiar gentle voice was right; not a month later, she soon had need of a soulgem to know her soul so as not to lose her mind to the Shifts. The colors changed when her soul did, in a way she only vaguely understood even now, or perhaps, _especially_ now. But those colors reflected who she was; the soulgem _was_ Kelia, showing her who she was, no matter what her outside form looked like.

She knew it. Knew it like she knew anything Drogan had taught her; getting it was her first, faint, fuzzy memory, something she had not thought of in a double-handful of years, even when she had cause _to_ remember, during her training. Why shouldn't she have remembered her first Shift, after all? Bird, as she recalled, the memory tugging at her, insisting she pay attention to it, no doubt trying to make up _now_ for all the years she had been unable to remember. She had looked up and saw a flock of sparrows flying across a field, beneath a blue sky, and wanted to fly too. So she had grown wings and flown.

But the sense of _memory_ didn't stop there; it kept tugging her, pulling her under, forcing her head down into a river, an ocean, of experiences and emotions, fragments of ideas and full events. A hundred, a thousand memories flicked before her eyes, everything she'd ever known, and it was all she could do to focus her attention on the main flow of experiences, the main points of her life. They weren't in chronological order by any means, but for some reason, they made sense to her, each one flowing into the next.

She had grown wings then, and later she had grown snakes, her hair twisting and writhing and suddenly heavy, felt herself grow taller as she could never manage in her regular form. Their laughter died in their throats, and they turned to run from her. They who had laughed when she slipped on the bank and fallen into the stream now made whimpering sounds of panic, too terrified even to scream in their prepubescent voices. They who took pleasure in the embarrassment of a little girl now had a medusa on their hands….Gods save them, because she would not.

And there she was, crouched on the steep muddy banks of the stream that wandered passed the little house, defining the boarder between meadow on her side and forest on the other. There was a plop, somewhere down in the little pool, a widening of the stream, and she became an otter with scarcely a thought, sliding down the bank with grace she would not have managed as a little girl. Besides, an otter was a happy, playful creature, and she wanted to play for a change, though with frogs and the fish and not with children her own age. And her soulgem flashed steadily, still on her hand, between her smallest and ring finger. It brightened, glowing like a starburst, engulfing her in warmth and…_goodness_. Unconditional love. The light faded, but not the sense of welcome and belonging…at least, with this person.

She no longer played in the streambed, but rather sat on top a table, kicking her heels in midair, and would turn her eyes downward in shame, if there wasn't a firm hand on her chin, forcing her head up."There now, dear, that's not so bad, is it?" Gentle hands brushed her hair back from her face, soft coldness pressed up onto her spectacular black eye. She bit her lip to hold back the tears, mouth set in a stubborn, mulish line. They may have given her a black eye, those bullies of village boys, years older than her and malicious, but they couldn't make her cry!

She did cry, years later, when the tall man in the white robes of a cleric specializing in healing straightened out her limbs, clucking his tongue sympathetically. "You're too strong, Kelia," her told her sadly as he rubbed her shoulders gently, his touch, laced with the power of his god, working out the deep aches and pains no ten year old should have. "You're too strong and you started Shifting too young; your body never had a chance to 'set' itself, to see this human form as its normal one, and is barely having a chance to grow normally. If something's not done soon, I don't know what will happen to you."

Something must be done. Those words rolled around her brain. The girl's too powerful – she turned the boy into stone as a medusa! Something must be done. She must stop Shifting into the powerful magical creatures, or her body will grow warped and twisted, confused as to what is the right base form. And yet she Shifts with her emotions and with a thought – she has no control. And who can control her? She is a child, but she is a stronger Shifter than some members of the Council! How can we control something more powerful than us? And yet, something must be done.

And something _was_ done. The memory was burned into her, so deep and hot she now wondered how she could have ever forgotten, even with what the council decided. She was sixteen now, and still had no control over emotions – no great surprise, considering every _other_ adolescent ever born – but with her shifting moods came true Shifts; the two were all but interchangeable to her. When she grew angry, she became a Dire Wolf, or a Minotaur, the favored fighting form of the militia, or even a Sphinx like the one she'd read about. And when she was happy, then the forms of a Dryad, a hawk, a horse were hers. And everything in between, every extreme, had a Shift too.

But there was no predicting which Shift would come which time, and that made the villages, say nothing of the Council, skittish.

They called her before them, and said that she needed to leave until she was no longer a threat to the common bystander…or anyone else, for that matter. She had to learn control; control first of her emotions, for the Shifts would follow, and then of the Shifts alone, until she could feel what she willed, but _not_ Shift with the emotion. She had hoped that they'd send her into the forest, to the Conclave of Druids and Rangers. She had…friends? Friends or the like among the Conclave. She would not be all alone, torn from everything familiar.

But they showed a rare streak of creativity, or perhaps stubbornness: if she remained close, seeing all her old enemies, prodding her feuds like a child prodding a newly-loose tooth, how would she learn to ignore her anger…and consequently, not Shift? Besides, there were no teachers for Shifters! None like she'd need, anyways. No one had ever lost control of their Shifts so _thoroughly_ before; by the time most started Shifting, they knew they needed control; she had sixteen years behind her of Shifting when and to what she pleased, and the concept of control, of _not_ Shifting, puzzled her. If she was happy, why shouldn't she show it…by being a hawk, soaring above the world?

And so they had looked her in the eye and told her that she was going on a long, long trip. And then the memory faded into blackness, a sort of inky velvet darkness that encompassed everything. _That's when they took my memories from me…Or hid them. Or whatever they did, _she realized, the thought one from the present, distant, detached from the thread of _what had been_.

There was a sense of movement, a journey, but the spell they had laid on her cloaked everything that had happened before that journey, and made everything after for some time to come…shadowed. Even now, with the stark light of day blazing down on her memories where there had once only been night, that journey was still the twilight. And she had a hunch that it would always be like that.

_Slight problem…I can't remember how long we traveled for – or who traveled with me – or even what direction! I can't…I can't remember where my village is…That's the only time I ever left it, and if I can't base the surroundings off of anything…If I can't trace my steps back from Drogan's…_The thought stubbornly refused to complete itself.

The very next thing she remembered clearly were eyes again, but not from a taller creature like the ones she had come to know so well since her fourth birthday, but from someone _shorter_ than her; shorter than her five feet and some odd inches at age sixteen. Still, they were kind, quietly sympathetic. "So, they say you're a Shifter?" His voice, though as booming as the one she knew so well, was rougher around the edges, brassy and strong. "Well, don't just stand there in the snow, lass! Come on in…welcome to my school. We'll see if we can't teach you something worth knowing. Mind, I'm not sure how strong you'll ever be, but raw power isn't everything."

Yes…that was the beginning of it, wasn't it? The beginning of her long tutelage under Master Drogan, lasting nearly twice as long as all the others, and even at the end of it, she had still been a weak Shifter…and insofar as she had known, she would _always _be a weak Shifter, nothing more.

For the first time, she _cursed_ Drogan and the elders of her apparent village, crying out to anything that had justice in it, her desire for something to make _them_ go through what _she_ went through, until _they_ were sitting here, freezing in the Eighth Hell. Only they could _stay _here, _rot _here!

She had had everything stripped from her by them – was tied and confined to weakness, had her memories taken from her so that she could not even remember being strong, and set free. _How could they?_ She demanded to the gray, uncaring sky, _How could they destroy who I was for no reason? Would they have ever freed my mind? Or would I have gone on, blind to the truth, forever?_

_No…_ It wouldn't make any sense, for Drogan to train her in the ways of a Shifter and never tell her why, at the very end. She rolled her fingers over her soulgem, safely balanced between her ring and little finger. There it had sat since her very first memory, and there it would remain, always in contact with her skin. A soulgem could never be taken from the body of a Shifter – it would stay with her through all her Shifts, more-or-less where she put it: when she didn't have hands or a suitable substitute to balance it on, it found someplace else on her body.

No, Drogan had never counted on dying. He must have had something planned, some way of telling her, of easing the shock; she had known him well enough to be confident in that statement. But that way would have to remain forevermore a mystery, and she would have to deal with things as they were. At least she knew now the person she had become, how she'd changed from that bright-eyed sixteen year old Shifter with no control.

The person she'd _suddenly_ become. A Shifter grew through their Shifts, gaining power the more they Shifted, naturally. But people changed and grew, too, building current experiences onto previous ones. When they bound her powers and her memories, they'd also bound up her potential to change; she had remained, in essence, a sixteen-year old these past five years. All her experiences in Undrentide, and then later, in the Undermountain and Underdark – _What's with all the Under-s, anyways? I don't count a small change of letters, as in Und**re**, either. Can the scholars not think of something more creative? – _amounted to nothing. She could not change, could not grow stronger, could not have a new opinion on whatever subject she was presented with.

But now…now she could do so much more, now that the block and the bind were gone, the block and bind she'd never guess existed. She looked down at her arms, flesh blue and numb from the intense coldness, and desired to be warm.

As if it was second nature – and in truth, she realized, it was, or it _could_ be – her skin seemed to swirl with white and blue lines, flesh adjusting, and then…she was. Not _warm_, but not as bothered by the cold as she was. She didn't even know _what_ she did, just that she did it.

_Skin…I Shifted just my skin to some creature's hide, something that can stand this cold…_Was that even possible? _Of course it is! I just did it, didn't I?_ She felt goose-flesh rise up on her arms. To Shift just _one_ part of her body into something different, but remain herself otherwise, even so simple a thing as skin, for such a vital reason as survival, was a manifestation of real power, _legendary_ power.

Power she hadn't dreamed she did have or could have until about a minute ago.

It made sense, thinking about it; all those Shifts, all that had happened to her post-bond, but pre-bond-break, had added up to _something_. Every time she Shifted, she got a little bit better, a little bit quicker, a little bit more controlled. But she hadn't been able to reap those benefits, and more, then, hadn't been able to grow in the normal fashion, gradually acquiring more power, better control. But now…

Now, she had all that experience flooding her body, all that power and speed and _control_ she had gained, as if it had always been there. Only…she didn't even know she had it, because she'd never had a chance to see it happening. Where most people made the mental journey in small steps, slowly getting used to the idea of power, she'd made in one giant leap. She had not first learned how to grow claws onto human hands, and then perhaps owl's eyes into a human's face, and later something else.

No, she was suddenly immersed into this power, and thus didn't know its full applications or its limits. The end result was the same; both others and she could look back on where they started and marvel that they had come so far. But where they knew the territory they had crossed to get to this peak, knew all the small steps intimately, had been at the various stages of power, she only knew that now she _was_ on the peak; what had once been barred to her by virtue of age and inexperience now was open to her.

She didn't try to puzzle it out any further. It was threatening to make sense, and, paradoxically, make her head hurt. It was enough that she could do it.

She tipped her head back, eyes closing as she tried her best to absorb all that had happened in the last five minutes, all the new thoughts that had popped into her head. Then her nostrils flared, sniffing at the air. Without a conscious thought, her body Shifted, a new mind arising in hers. A predator's mind. A…a _thing_, shaped somewhat like a small gargoyle with too many spines, flew past her concealed half-cave, never seeing her. There was no need for thoughts, not in this form; she lunged for its throat, and the next thing she knew, hot blood was pouring down her throat.

She swallowed, surprised that she enjoyed the metallic taste of blood in her mouth, and pleased to find heat kindling once more in her. She growled, and shifted her grip, opening a larger wound, tearing a chunk of flesh from the still-living thing. Her fangs knifed through the paradoxically cold and hot flesh, and she swallowed automatically. Hot blood. Cold flesh. Product of the hells, no doubt. Not that she cared; food was food.

Two more bites from the tender neck-meat, and she felt the heart of the gargoyle-creature slow at last, overcome by its wounds. And when it had ceased its struggle, only then did she look down upon it…and smiled. It was a scrawny thing, this strange not-quite-familiar creature, but there was enough meat on it to give her a full meal. She would eat, and live. And she would hunt again, and again, until all the snow of Cania was red with the blood of her kills…

She blinked, stopping dead in her tracks, unaware that she had been moving, tearing her dream-struck gaze from the sharp horizon to what was before her, the cliffs that rose up and cast the white snow into shadow, driving the temperature even farther down. Almost on cue with the trail of her thoughts, a particularly strong gust of wind shrieked down the convenient channel of cliffs, making even her, in her skin resistant to the cold and her thick coat of fur, shiver. _That much blood? That much death? Why? I could never eat all that meat, and my revenge is against _Cay_, not against Cania or it's creatures. _

_Death for the sake of death._

Yes…that was the reason in her mind; death for no better reason than she wanted to kill something. She wanted to go out into the icy Wastes, her big, arctic-tinged Dire Wolf form suited to hunt and kill, and take what she could, _because_ she could. _Is this the nature of evil?_ _Evil…_

Standing there, at the base of the cliffs, just in front of a little nook that had been her sanctuary for what felt like an eon, with the dead troll at her feet, she felt as though she had been snatched from her body and then thrown back in. She heard the wind, and wondered if the shrieks it carried came from passing through the canyons, or was instead a voice, the voice of _Cania_. A voice that softly lulled her, coaxing out more violence from her, encouraging her revenge, but not as she planned it: the voice or whatever it was offered bloodier solutions, brutal tortures, all that Cay deserved…right?

This was new, and not, all in the same breath. People had been influencing her all her life, after all, manipulations she only saw now; what else to call Drogan's and Cay's insistence that she was weak, and her belief in their words? But for a _place_, for an intangible, to be able to exert so much power over her…it was shocking. And frightening. Cania was as relentless as the winter it personified; the soft whisper suggesting more blood, more revenge, would never cease. But for it to affect the mind of a Shift like that…it amplified the wolf's desires, and made them harder to resist, easier for her to slide into that way of thinking, not as a rational human, but as a beast…one with bloodlust….

That trait, at least, was familiar: once, long ago, back when she was just beginning her apprenticeship under Master Drogan, she had been told to Shift into a hawk, on the edge of a forest clearing. That was fine; she became a hawk so often that checking for feathers in her hair had become an absent habit, making sure she had Shifted all the way back. But this time….

She had taken off, and before she could _blink_ she had a mouse trapped in her talons, dead, and was ripping into it with beak and talon, high up in a pine tree. It had taken her a moment to remember that she was usually a human, not a hawk, that she didn't eat raw mice she had caught herself.

In the end, it had taken the combined efforts of Drogan, Farghan the resident Druid, and Mistress Nora Hurst, who lived outside the village and was a kind soul, to get her down from the tree: in her horror, she had dropped the Shift and couldn't climb down the thin, whippy branches. She knew neither Farghan nor Mistress Hurst ever understood why she had been so distraught. It was not, as they might have thought, that she was sorry she had killed the mouse.

No, she had merely been shocked and terrified by the power of the hawk's mind in hers; she had not been Kelia, a human Shifter. She had been a hawk, with a hawk's mind and a hawk's desire to _hunt_. Mice, in that case. Anything, in the case of the Canian Dire Wolf, as she was beginning to think of this more savage creature.

And after that day, all of Drogan's lectures on a Shifter needing to know their soul made much more sense. Before, she had been puzzled, and somewhat arrogant – she had known who she was, hadn't she? She was Kelia, a human, with a generally-slow temper and a playful streak a mile wide…but all that vanished the instant she became something else. And with the change of body came the change of mind; when she Shifted into a hawk, she _thought_ like a hawk. And so it became imperative to know who _she_ was, a knowledge based not on her outer shell, but rather on the soul.

For it would be so easy to lose herself in the mind of the whatever outside shape was hers at any given moment, to let that mind become _her_ mind…and she could not vouch for the consequences of losing her mind now, in Cania. For as the hawk desired to hunt, so long ago, now the wolf needed to hunt too…but not hunt, she mused. Not really: the wolf just wanted to _kill_, as very few natural wolves did. If she let a Shift's mind become hers, here in Cania, the Eighth Hell of the Nine…she would never be herself again. She wasn't sure what she'd become, but she knew that she didn't _want_ that change, not looking forward at it now, with cool rational eyes.

But. She would live. Somehow. She sank back on her haunches, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, and shivered. This would never do – the fur she'd gained as a wolf thickened even as she slid back into what was in essence her human form, bleaching from gray and black to white, warming her better than her thick cloak. She didn't know where she'd drawn inspiration from for it – probably a creature from the polar regions that Drogan had once made her study. And from her time spend running around outside his school in the dead of winter with a fever… In any case, now she was warm, _really_ warm, as she hadn't been since the last time she had been able to sit by a fire.

The last time she had been really warm had been with Cay, perhaps as long as two days back, waking up to what she thought would be her last day in the Hells, the day they all found the Knower of Names at last…but then Cay had betrayed them…The memory was strong as the smell of rotting flowers in autumn, impossible to miss, impossible to forget…and as all-consuming.

There was warmth in her fur, and warmth in her belly as a fire sprang to life deep within her; it howled like a cat in a thunderstorm, just two words. _Revenge! Justice!_ There was no longer any difference between those two ideas – justice on Caylassa would be Kel's revenge and vice versa.

She almost leapt to her feet and surged out into the snowy wastes, the fire in her blood demanding that she go and find Cay _now_, go and right this wrong committed on her. Cay needed to answer for murder and attempted murder, as the law would define her crimes, and more, for her flat-out betrayal of them all.

And Kel would be the one to call her before the gods of justice and demand a reckoning in blood. She was the only one who _could_, the only one who knew of the extent of Cay's crimes, and the one who needed justice the most.

No…not justice. She just needed _answers_. _Why?_ She whispered to the killing winds, feeling as though they stole even the thought from her, carrying it up into the clouds with shrieks of sadistic laughter. _You were the light, and now you are the darkness. Why did you betray us all? _

The answer to that oh-so important question of motive wasn't here, in her little nook, in her own mind. The answer was in Cay's. And she intended to hear it, soon. She wanted to know now, but…

How? How did she go about getting the answer and then extracting revenge? She didn't even know where Cay _was_ at this point in history. Well…she had gone first to kill Mephistopheles, that much Kel had figured out from Cay's comments prior to their return to the City of Lost Souls; no matter what happened, Cay would go back to Waterdeep and kill Mephistopheles…if you _could_ kill an archdevil, that is.

At the very least, logic said that Cay had to consolidate her power, her control over this plane of Hell, but then…? How did one go about conquering a plane like Cania? And if Caylassa managed to achieve her goals, then where would she live? _Where Mephistopheles ruled…wherever that is…_She felt her eyes harden as she shook her head to herself, looking out without seeing at the foreign landscape of Cania.

She didn't know. Didn't know where Cay was…that was a crimp in the revenge plans, to be sure. At least…it would be a crimp in the revenge plans if she actually _had_ revenge plans beyond wanting revenge. But not being knowing where the intended victim was would be a crimp in _any_ revenge plans…

_First, find her. Then…_

Hells, she didn't know. She wanted revenge, knew it like she knew that she was a Shifter, but she didn't know _how_. Slowly and painfully went without saying. _Poison, then_? Almost as though her words had triggered it, she _felt_ a snake writhe within her, coiling around her belly, cunning and patient, already readying the cold venom within its fangs. She closed her eyes, listening to the hiss and deadly swish of the smooth-scaled serpent within her. It was…darker than she remembered, whether because she was calling upon it for cold-blooded murder and revenge or merely because she was in the Hells.

She couldn't say she minded, either way. It was the most curious thing – she _knew_ that it was dangerous to listen to such inclinations, on pain of changing as Cay had been changed. And yet, though she knew she didn't want her soul to be changed so drastically, she didn't care. It might not be _good_ that the snake was dark and cold, but it felt _right_. Strong. And that might be why she tolerated it.

_No_. She decided, mind snapping back to her previous thought. No, not poison, not even by the fangs of a snake. She wanted…she wanted…She wanted Caylassa to _see_ her, didn't want her to wonder who had killed her; even a hunch was too ambiguous for her tastes at this moment. She wanted Caylassa to see the "weak Shifter" kill her, wanted her to see just how wrong she'd been when she said that "the Hells would take care of the Shifter".

But of course, she first had to make damn sure she was stronger than Cay, strong enough to indeed kill her and any guards she may employ. For she who stabs a queen must stab to kill. And Cay would not hesitate to kill her, "to preserve her own life" or just because that's how Cay was, if she'd forgotten such moralistic ideals. In the end, Kelia really would have one chance at killing Caylassa – she had to make it count. She had to be able to Shift not only into truly powerful creatures, but also creatures that could take a great deal of damage, creatures that were in their turn hard to attack. _Like…golems? Is it even possible to Shift into a golem? …I guess I'm going to have to find out._

_What else?_ She wondered as she stared out at the miniature tornados of snow that rose and fell at the whim of the winds. _If not poison, not any subtle way, then how? Strength enough to kill her…but where? Strength like a tiger, or strength like a medusa?_ Which would serve her better? Cay had killed a medusa before, of course, but that didn't mean raw physical power was any better. Especially not if she could still charm Valen into fighting for her.

_Valen_. A shiver went down her spine at the name, the fine hairs on her back lifting and settling in a wave. Good gods, she couldn't even _dream_ of matching the tiefling, not after having seen him win battles against creatures powerful almost beyond imagination. If she had to fight Valen along with Cay…she doubted she'd survive, even if she was as strong a Shifter as Qua'tona. _And of course, he'd fight for her. Not willingly, not by his own choice, but because he can't stop loving her, because he can't help but want her to live, want to protect her…_

Kel shook her head to herself, absently reaching up a hand to fiddle with a strand of frost-encrusted hair. She couldn't say she understood how he could _not_ hate her, how he couldn't chose to stop loving her. It seemed like such a simple concept – fundamentals, really: people changed and so did emotions…

_No, they didn't_. It was a chill realization, one that caused her heart to skip a beat. Not if they were _bound_, not if someone had reached inside and fiddled with them. She of all people should know, shouldn't she? After all, hadn't she been similarly bound, forced to remain in one mindset until just a few short minutes ago?

_I have to free him. Not only to equal the scales, but also because…because he is in the same situation I'm in…except worse, because he has no choice, no chance. And…to leave him here, after Cay's dead, that's like a death-sentence, isn't it? That's…leaving him to die, alone in the hells. _

_That's what happened to me._

_I wouldn't do that to _anyone_, much less someone who's done so much for us…_

_So, free Valen. How?_ She couldn't stop her upper lip from twitching upwards in a sneer. _Oh, this is _rich_, Kelia. You don't even know _you can_ get out of here alive, much less kill your best friend, who's the best swords-woman Drogan's ever taught, and free her magically-imprisoned lover, who, until the bond on his soul is broken, will fight for her…and he's an even better fighter than Cay!_ _What else do you want to do? Stop the Blood Wars single-handedly? I think it would be almost easier than what you've decided to take on!_

_No…not decided._ The thought was quiet in her mind, a cool contradiction to the hot-blooded scorn. _I _could_ just walk away from all this, sure. But I'd still have to survive long enough to find a way out, and who knows how hard that'd be? As long as I'm here…I might as well take that which is my due. Revenge._

_But how?_

She couldn't help blow a sigh through her teeth as she failed to come up with what came after finding Cay. _Well…worry about that then. For now…survive. And we come back to the question of the day: How?_ she asked herself as she stood, gazing down at the cliffs dropping away to the City of Lost Souls. Her mind slipped easily over her old lessons, recalling to mind what she had been taught so long ago and what had been reinforced by five years on the trail with Cay, five years experience of adventuring.

_Find shelter, find food, regroup. I can't kill her now, not if I don't know where she is. So, I wait, survive. I get stronger. And I listen, and learn. Learn where she is, how she's guarded, where she's weakest. Learn where _I_ am, where I am strongest, what I can do. And one day, I find her. And then…no more running. No more hiding. We'll finish it then, a reckoning in blood. And then I'll leave her dead and forge my own path._

_But to where? If – _When_ I get out of here, where am I going to go? What will I do? What do I_ want_ to do? _

_I don't know. I barely know who I am! Am I still the same Kelia who came to this place with Cay? How _can_ I be? Before I didn't know my past and now I do! How much does the past influence who I am? Does it matter I was bullied and ostracized when I was a child, or is it more important that Cay betrayed me _now

_Philosophical questions, _she realized, shaking her head to herself at her folly: _Later_, She told herself. These mental gymnastics weren't important right now. Survival was. Right now, _what_ was more important than _who_. She was a Shifter. What others dreamed of doing, she did. And because she was a Shifter and not an idiot muscle-bound fighter, she would survive this place; she could Shift, adapt to her landscape in ways that would baffle most other humans. More, she could adapt _completely_, and somehow, someway as of yet hidden to her, _thrive_ where others would die. She had to. It was her only hope…as clichéd as that sounded.

In any case, it was time to go now; if she stayed here, she had little chance of getting warm, and every chance of something _else_ stumbling on her. She gathered the tattered folds of her cloak around her, holding in the warmth of her fur and protecting her flesh from the blasts of the cold winds, and moved out from the relative shelter of the cliff wall. She needed a better shelter, and more food. Shelter and food…two commodities worth their weight in gold here.

_But where to find them…?_ Her gaze was drawn back to the City of Lost Souls once more, tempted, but then she turned away. No. She would be a beacon there, too unusual – the only living soul, the only non-planar. She would draw too much attention to herself. That left the Wastes. The _Deep_ Wastes. _On the bright side, it's secluded. No one will ever find me._ And at the end of the day, that was the most important thing.


	4. Ch 2, part 2

A/N: A _long_ overdue chapter, I know. However, in my defense, its not the _writing_ that takes so long – it's the editing! I want Cania to be _hell_, not the glossed-over version they gave us in the game. However, all intentions aside, _getting_ it hellish can be quite a process.

But no, this story is not abandoned, nor will it ever be. I'll admit it – I'm too attached to Kel to let it die.

Thank you for your patience, then, in waiting for this chapter – double thanks to witchwolf, my fearless editor. And, as always, enjoy.

* * *

Kelia stretched, unable to rationalize why _thinking_ had tired her so, and set out across the snowy landscape, the icy wind cutting through her wool cloak as if it were silk. She didn't recognize the area, but that meant little; there were few landmarks in Cania, and they hadn't had the time or inclination to explore before. Besides, she admitted, she had fled the City of Lost Souls in tears– mental at first, and then real tears as she dropped her rat Shift – stumbling her way out into the snowy plains, not caring where she was going until she grew too cold to move. Then she had wedged herself in the nearest nook in the cliffs and…well… 

_Never mind_, she told herself. _Let the past be the past…let's focus on the future… a future, a path, that _I_ choose. I'm sick of having my choices dictated to me. Wherever I go, whatever I do now, it will be because _I_ chose it, not because someone _told_ me to_.

_Pretty words. Now I just need to live up to it… _

She paused, leaning against a crystal, scanning the cliffs that dropped away in a series of trenches and canyons. Somewhere there had to be…There! The river of lava running through Cania, nameless, fathomless; why it existed here amid the icy wastes was a mystery, one she doubted she'd ever solve. But she could think of no likelier place to find shelter and warmth – where there was lava, there had to be heat, and heat was life in Cania.

She picked her way down the cliff face and into the shadowed canyon leading towards the red river. Now that she was moving, getting the ice out of her blood, as it were, her mind made up to survive, it was not a long journey, or even a hard one. She kept a weathered eye out, though, for the dangers of the Wastes – just from what she'd seen during her trek with Cay and the others, the few ice trolls and frost giants they had run across were the least of her concerns. She had seen, out of the corner of her eyes as Cay hurried them along, white moving against white, and remembered Drogan's lectures on the polar regions and the creatures that lived there; even though the coldest Artic would pale before Cania, she figured that anything living here would, as in the poles, be camouflaged with white fur. Who knew when or how or why these "normal" creatures arrived here, but they seemed to be here to stay.

And that wasn't even getting into the devils, the natural inhabitants of Cania, who weren't as bothered by the cold as the other creatures were. _They _would be the common ones here, not whatever she was used to. Instead of eking out a bare existence, the devils _ruled_. Fearless. Powerful. She had a sinking suspicion that whatever she had killed earlier was some kind of devil, and she'd only been able to slay it because she'd been taken it by surprise. A good lesson, but probably not one that would be as effective the next time. Her knowledge of devils was, at best, fractured and spotty, taken from what she could infer from Valen's war stories and the two Knowers they had encountered, and from what she had observed in the City of Lost Souls…and that was almost pure behavior, with no explanation behind it. But she still knew that it was a very bad idea to cross paths with any kind of devil, if she enjoyed living.

She was in no condition to fight, not a troll, not a giant, and certainly not another devil! And it would be a devil she encountered most often out here; this _was_ one of the Nine Hells, after all. The scent of death still lingered in her nostrils, reminding her with every breath just how close she'd come to actually dying here, alone. She could still die, she admitted to herself as she passed in and out of the shadows of the various cliffs, the temperature dropping even farther out of the scant half-light that emitted from somewhere in the perpetually overcast sky. Even with fur, even with skin that could withstand the cold, she knew that here in the Nine Hells, death was too easy, to common, just to dismiss hand out of mind when it had been beaten once.

No, death lurked around every corner in the Frozen Wastes in all its guises; from screaming blizzards that didn't care if they killed, to creatures that would fight her if only for the warmth in her blood and flesh, to devils that would…well, do whatever they did to those they captured. She felt a half-nervous, half-hysterical giggle escape her lips; she had to survive here, and she didn't even know what _would be _the consequences for failure that did _not_ result in her death. Though, she did have a sinking suspicion that no matter what the devils did to captives, she would prefer death.

She still couldn't remember much of the terrain she had just crossed, and made a mental note to start paying more attention to her surroundings, not just in case of attack, but also so that she knew additional hiding places in case she was being chased, and of course, where she was going if she had to flee. Too many times she had been neatly herded into a box canyon in her travels; such an event here in the Hells would be the death of her, even if she managed to Shift to something with wings.

The Hells did not tolerate carelessness.

_Well…they won't get a chance, then._ She felt her upper lip curl at the thought, _anger_ sliding into her, anger at the cruelty of the plane itself. Qua'tona had told her that the Hells would break her – emotionally and mentally. But not physically. Not unless she was too weak, even now, to survive a place where evil penetrated even the rocks and glaciers.

_You won't__** ever**__ get me!_ she screamed, and then felt childish, taunting something she couldn't even see, throwing an empty challenge into the winds. _And just how wise is it to tempt Fate…or Cania?_ She shook her head to herself. _Control, Kel, control. Anger, fine, sure. Anger's good; sharpens the senses, gives you a reason to live, to fight. But not to the point of foolishness – that _will_ get you killed. And you don't want that. You have things to do._

And then, suddenly, she was turning to pick her way along the icy banks of the river of lava, getting as close as she dared to the life-giving warmth, even warier now – who was to say that other creatures weren't taking the same advantage? She had to keep one eye on her feet, however, as she picked her way over the slick stones that lined the bank of the molten river; the ice constantly melted from the heat of the river and refroze from the cold of the world. If she lost her footing and plunged into the deadly heat…_ironic_ wouldn't even begin to cover it. Her nostrils flared, scenting the air for danger…

Wait….

Yes…there was the stiff staleness of a cave; unmoving air, but _warm_ unmoving air. She should know the scent of caves by now, after their extended jaunt through both Undermountain and Underdark, say nothing of all the caves that had riddled the lands around Hilltop…. She slowly turned her head from side to side, looking for….There, a patch of dense shadows in the cliff face close to a small tributary flowing into the lava river.Faint warmth, but compared to the outside…

She didn't hesitate, but plunged inside. There were pale shapes moving against the blackness, but not for long, if things went well….She needed this cave, needed the warmth, and that desperation made her dangerous.

She had already Shifted, though _when_, she couldn't say. She just knew that she was a…a wolf, her usual battle-Shift. Probably a winter wolf, considering where she was. Except…it was no winter wolf _she'd_ ever been. Too big, too muscular. Too fierce. It saw the…the _blobs_ as interlopers into her rightful domain,and so attacked with teeth and claws indiscriminately. Lulled by the ease of combat, the glorious flex of muscle, the feel of her strong teeth slicing through flesh and…well, more flesh, it took her a moment to realize that she had put herself into the middle of the group…into the middle of danger….

She growled deep in her throat as a claw slashed across her flank - painful but not serious. Not yet. The revelation was as clean as ice before a battle: she couldn't just keep hitting whatever she felt like and expect to come out alive. She could not fight these diabolic monsters as she had been; without looking for a weakness to exploit. All her adventuring with Cay should have taught her _that_, at the very least: to look for an easier way.

Kel narrowed her eyes, the hairs along the back of her neck rising, and spun to face one moving mound of flesh. She crouched, and then leapt up, soaring high above its head. Even as she blessed the strength and agility of the greater wolf's body, she sucked in a breath and barked out a stream of frost and _cold_.

It struck the…the…_thing_ squarely, and she saw frostburn spread across its skin, saw its flesh crack and break off in chunks. It staggered backwards, blundering into theothers, those that had managed to turn themselves to face her new position, and more frozen pieces brushed off.

She dug her claws into the ice-slicked floor for traction, head low, an involuntary growl vibrating her chest. The taste of a snowstorm burned in her throat, and she automatically sucked in huge gulps of air, eyes focused on the wounded _thing_ before her, waiting for…well, for everything to be _right_. She couldn't describe it better than that; it was something between her throat and her chest counting off the seconds as it expanded with air until she thought it might burst…

The blob, followed by four all-but identical things behind it, surged forward, and her growl became a howl of ice. She lunged to meet the first in line, slamming her shoulder into the center of the web of frostbite. To her faint surprise, the _thing_ shattered mirror-like beneath her weight, scattering frozen chips of flesh all across the floor. _That worked…_

And only then did she turn her attention to the other four who were still approaching her, uncaring or unable to comprehend the death of their fellow, hereyes bright with the bloodlust of a winter wolf and the knowledge of a human– knowledge of where and how to attack this enemy: freeze them solid, and then shatter the pieces. Desperation made her fearless, reckless, made her forget that this was her first time she'd really fought something on her own. Bloodlust pushed all of Cay's and Drogan's comments on the weakness of Shifters right out of her skull. And in that gleaming moment, she was strong, and knew no fear.

Four…_things_ later,she stood in the center of the rounded cavern, feeling the warmth of a magma pool leak up from cracks beneath her feet, heart singing with pride…and adrenaline. The wolf in her would throw her head back and howl her victory to the stars above…only there were no stars in Cania, now were there? The thought arrowed into her mind, oddly calm and detached. Day or night, it didn't matter, the skies were the color of a poor-country inn's cutlery; she remembered that much from…was it only a few days back, that she was with Cay, and Deekin, and Valen?

_Yes, it was…but do I really have time to brood on it? No._ She gave her head a hard shake to clear her thoughts, and then settled down to the important business of surveying her new domain. It was large enough that she could, as a human, stand up straight and pace, small enough that the heat radiating up from the cracks was enough to warm the cave. The sides were rounded, made of dark stone with a coating of clear ice – the warmth of the cave was all relative. There was only one entrance – or exit – the one she had come in by. That was fortunate – only one way anything could stumble in from the outside.

Still, almost all of what _could_ stumble in was dangerous. She would have to sleep light, or risk having her throat torn out with no way to prevent it. Or…_Block it, hide it somehow then. If I had a very large boulder, I could block it…but then how would I get in? Shift into__something strong enough to move it, of course. But if _I_, though strengthened, can move it, then so can anything else…I'll work on it._

She turned her attention from the door to the opposite wall; it didn't quite match the others; there were cracks at the corners and the floor, deep cracks. She padded over to it, frowning as she sniffed at it, then rested the top of her skull on the stone. It was warm, warm as nothing in this hellish plane was. She recalled the small stream of lava flowing outside, and could guess at what happened to form the cave; this cave and the one that held lava now had been a small outlet over one of the reservoirs of lava, and the molten rock had carved out this chamber, this passage. Then the earth shifted, cutting the cave in half and blocking the flow of magma into this cave. In time, the supply had run out or hardened, and the cave had stood empty until the monsters had come to inhabit it, drawn to the heat the cracks still let escape up.

Only…they weren't the first to claim this, were they? Her wolf nose could smell the flesh of those she'd just defeated, yes. But she could also smell older bodily fluids…not _much_ older, but older nonetheless. She stepped back towards the center, lifting up her muzzle to better scent the air, and then turned her head in the direction of the front wall. She padded over, and nudged a mostly-frozen scrap of green – or yellow or brown, she couldn't really tell – skin. Something else had dwelled in this cave; it didn't smell like the blob-things, that much she could tell, even in the cold.

In fact…curious now, she pawed at the green skin, overturning it, and snuffed at the ground. Not just the blob-things and whatever the greenish skin belonged to – there was the scent of a third type of…blood would be the best word for it, she supposed, though who knew what _really_ flowed in the veins of diabolic creature? _Three things…Hm…_The blobs had come last, that much she had witnessed. But before that, two groups had fought for possession, probably this very day.One triumphed over the other, and then…vanished? Without leaving a trace? How…?

Lava. It _smelled_ right to her; the winning group had skidded into the lava river, leaving no trace of their presence but a hint of blood on the ice. The blobs then found it, and she found them, and it was hers now. All of it. Right now, it reeked of sickly-sweet death, there was ichor freezing into puddles on the floor, but it was warmer than outside, and it was the safest place she was likely to find outside the City of Lost Souls…unblocked door or no. Kelia closed her eyes and nodded – this would be a good base. Now she just needed to figure out what to do….

_Isn't that obvious, Kel?_ She asked herself as she stretched, yawning. _Survive. Survive long enough to get out of here…_

And just how was she going to do that?

It was a good question, and now that she was out of the killing-cold, it begged an answer. _Begin with what you know… _She pawed idly at the floor, then eased out of the Shift to sit down cross-legged in the middle of the cave and took a quick personal inventory. The results were depressing.

She wore only her skin-tight Shifter's tunic, dark brown trimmed in black and bronze, barely covering what it needed to cover. Wrapped around her was her tattered fur-lined cloak, not even enough to beat back the coldness of the world. Which was why she kept the white fur she'd Shifted into even now…

Caylassa had always carried most of the supplies, and if not her than Valen and Deekin, as Kelia _couldn't_; when she Shifted, she took nothing with her – everything dropped. Only skintight clothing remained. Once more she snorted to herself, crossing her arms over her knees. She would have to start from scratch, then. Basic supplies, weapons, clothing…and food. She laid her cheek on her arm, staring at nothing, making lists in her mind.

Bedroll. Blankets. Torches would be a blessing. Something edible, though she didn't quite know _where_ she was going to find something to eat in the hells, in Cania: could one eat Velox berries? Better clothing – she was damned if she was going to run around in nothing but a Shifter's tunic and a battered cloak, even _with_ all the Shifting she would be doing. She'd _like_ to have some kind of basin to bathe in – melt a little ice, and she could have a fine bath. For that matter: soaps and cloths to scrub herself clean. She _was not_ going to carry half the dirt of Cania around with her on her skin! Some sort of weapon: at least a multi-purpose small blade she could skin things with.

Too much. All of it necessary for survival. And not a gold coin to her name…And no way to get any beyond beggaring herself and selling off what was most dear. Her fingers stabbed through her short reddish-brown hair, her shoulders shifting and flexing in thought…Something on her back moved, and she contorted herself to see what it was…_A Bag of Holding!?_

That was right! Her mind snapped back to a clear memory, not three months old….

* * *

"Kel!"

She looked up as Cay burst into their shared room at the Yawning Portal with all the delicacy of a fishwife. She wiggled her bare toes in the sunlight a moment, then placed her finger in her book to mark the page and turned from the narrow window looking down at the street. "Hm?"

Caylassa…_bounced_ over to her, and continued to do so even after she'd come to a halt in front of the Shifter, rocking up and down on her toes, hands firmly clasped behind her back. "I've got a present for you!"

"What _kind_ of present?" Kel asked suspiciously, images of the 'dead eel incident' dancing before her eyes.

"A _good_ one," Cay promised, which did little to relieve her worries. With a throaty laugh at the Shifter's continued skepticism, she whipped her hands out from behind her back and thrust a small, softly tanned leather pack at the younger girl. "Happy Birthday!"

"It's not my birthday," Kel muttered as she took the pack from Cay, running appreciative hands over the flawless leather.

"Eh, close enough."

"It's not for six months!"

"Like I said…" Cay laughed, and then took a seat on the bed beside Kel. "So, you like?"

Kel hesitated, flipping open the flap and peeking inside. She shook her head. "I don't know, it's kind of small, isn't it?"

"Kel, would I give you a gift that wasn't, you know, _good_? Do _not_ answer that," she instructed as she plunked the bag from Kel's hands, and a heavy ceramic ewer from the nightstand. "Observe, and prepare to be amazed." Dramatically, she opened the pack, and shoved the ewer inside. With a blithe "Catch!" she tossed it at Kel.

Her hands came up instinctively, but she still fully expected to be smacked in the chin with a very heavy ceramic ewer, only mildly softened by the leather….Her fingers clamped down around the leather, and she stared in amazement. She had seen the ewer go in…so why couldn't she feel it? There was absolutely _no_ difference in the weight from when it was empty to now, even though she knew full well that the ewer had to weigh _something_…. "What is this?" she asked, eyes still on the pack, awestruck.

"A Bag of Holding," Caylassa explained with a grin. "The very best one I could find: the shopkeeper didn't even know how much it would hold, or so he swore. See, it doesn't matter how big things are or how much they weigh – you can put anything in, and the bag will never weigh any more than it already does. I had a hunch…well, try it on."

With a shrug, Kel did so, swinging the long shoulder strap diagonally across her body, the pack – eerily empty, considering what she knew was in it – resting right under her shoulder blades, in the hollow of the small of her back. "Alright," Cay continued, "Shift."

Kel blinked. "What?!"

"Shift," Cay repeated her command.

The Shifter in question considered, then shook her head. "Cay, it's just going to drop when I get smaller, or the strap'll burst when I get bigger…"

A pair of tawny eyes fixed on her, and Cay crossed her arms over her chest. "Would you just humor me and Shift?"

Kel rolled her eyes, sighed, and focused on the hawk within her; better it drop than be torn apart, and once Cay saw that it wouldn't work, best intentions aside, they could find something that _would_. Feathers sprouted along her arms, her nose arched into a beak, and she began to plummet towards the smooth-sanded floorboards of the inn. She had spent much of her time as a hawk, back at Drogan's; it was a fast, easy Shift, one she hardly had to think about.

She ruffled her feathers, hopped-skipped, spreading her wings, and fluttered up to the bedpost. Mentally apologizing for the claw-marks, she fussed with her balance on the round knob, until she was no longer in fear of slipping off. And only then did she look back, fully expecting to see…

It was gone.

It took a long minute for the knowledge to penetrate, and then she dropped the hawk Shift, twisting and letting herself fall even as she did so, aiming for the bed. With human fingers, she reached up and felt the baldric-strap of bag, running the pads of her fingers over the smooth leather.

_Wolf_…her battle-Shift, she knew it almost as well as she knew the hawk, and was quicker at it, too. Fur blossomed on her face, her neck, and so on down to toes that were rapidly becoming claws. On four legs, she leapt off the bed and shook herself, as if to rid herself of bathwater, and then half-spun in a circle, trying her best to look over her back, to see if the bag had shrunk with her, or…

It was gone again.

It, like her skin-tight Shifter's tunic, Shifted with her, absorbing into her skin.

She threw her head back and gave a wild howl of victory, Cay looking on with an indulgent smile. The bag Shifted with her! She could use it and not have to worry about where it'd end up – in shreds or somewhere miles behind. She could carry her own supplies, and would never again have to bother Caylassa, who carried everything for both of them, to retrieve personal goods. For once, she would quite literally pull her own weight in their campaigning duo.

She dropped the Shift, and straightened from her crouch on the floor, stretching. In thanks, she grinned at Cay and nodded. "Alright," she admitted. "You chose well." Indeed, the Bag _was_ a good gift, even more than Cay could have imagined when picking it out; it would hold everything she needed it to hold, without hindering her movement in or out of Shifts…and thus, it would free her.

And in response, Cay only smiled…

* * *

…Thrusting the nauseating memory from her, Kel wiggled out of the Bag of Holding and ripped open the clasp, then stuck her arm down into it and began to randomly fish out what she'd stored inside. Her dark green bedroll, a small bag of coins, and a lot of other 'worthless' stuff clattered on the stone floor…including the original ewer Cay had tested it with – somehow, they'd forgotten to take it out, and she'd further forgotten she'd had it…just like she'd forgotten she had the Bag of Holding, period.

Nothing she could use to really help her, she noted as she began to sort the items into piles, but nothing that hurt, either; she hadn't been looking forward to sleeping on cold stone floors. The ewer solved the problem of washing, if she could find some way to melt the water and keep it liquid, and she supposed that coins were always good to have…even if she doubted she could find _anyone_ in Cania who would sell her _anything_, especially for the few coins she had.

Perhaps she'd been right, so long ago, she mused as she rolled out her bedroll atop one of the cracks, laying it flat let the warmth penetrate the thin cloth. The Bag of Holding really _would_ free her: free her now, in the Hells, by making it easier for her to survive and thus giving her more time to focus on what she wanted – _needed _– to do. It freed her from the petty and mundane to consider and act upon her revenge…and on finding a way out of this icy pit. After all, if her days were filled with searching for food and trying to keep warm, when would she ever have time to look for a portal?

She stepped back, considered the effect, then flopped down onto it, half-shivering with remembered cold. Even with the Bag and its subsequent contents, her survival wasn't guaranteed; if she just had the bedroll, she would freeze to death half-way through the night. But she had her Shifter tricks, as Caylassa had once called them. She would have fur, would have a different creature's skin as her own. She'd live through this night, and the next.

_Take another creature's skin as her own…_Well, that solved the problem of warmth, and even, to a certain extent, clothing; in a pinch, she could add fur and call it good. After all, who was here to see her? And if she could hunt these hellish wastes, could eat and digest the meat from the denizens – or even the various remains she was bound to find – that solved the problem of food.

_A scavenging creature, then, one that can eat _anything_ and laugh at indigestion…_ Her mind immediately leapt to the various Shifts in her known repertoire that fit that criterion. It was eerily instinctive, as though this was something she did every day, to a greater or lesser extent…but she didn't. Up until now, she had stayed within the same few Shifts, hardly branching out in spite of Drogan's – and later, Cay's – urgings. Wolf, hawk, bat, panther, with a few variations on either side; that was about the extent of her powers.

Then.

But now…_A hyena, maybe, or perhaps a troll…? Gargoyles eat rocks, I think, so if I get _really _hungry, I can just chew on the walls of the cave. Joy._

Very well, so she could survive temperatures that should, by all rights, turn her into a block of ice, and could likely find food in a place that was designed to torment and, in essence, kill. What else could Shifts help her with? She'd said that she would survive because she could adapt – now the question became _how_ was she going to adapt, both physically and mentally.

She could sacrifice scraps of her cloak if she _had_ to have washcloths; fur would keep her warm enough at night, and her Shifter's tunic would keep her decent, if it mattered. And, of course, most creatures she'd Shift into had teeth and claws: weapons and tools both. She was fairly sure most of her Shifts could see in the dark – and if not, well, she'd get to see if she _could_ put an owl's eyes in a bear's face. _That'll be interesting. And,_ the small pessimistic side of her added, _if it doesn't work, painful_.

She would still need something for a fire – even with fur, she didn't think she wanted to risk life in the hells without a fire. In the cave, out of the wind, she could likely start one with flint and steel…if she had flint or steel. _Perhaps there is someone in the City of Lost Souls who would sell me some…? Surely, I have enough coins for a tinder box! …except this is a tinder box in an icy Hell, and so would be worth more than one for sale in a desert. If there even _is_ one for sale here…_

Thievery, perhaps, would get her some of her needs, if she couldn't buy the various items for whatever reason. She was…leery of it, though; who was to say that she'd be a _good_ thief, even with her Shifts to help her? Or, worse, if she was _too_ good a thief…what would happen when she got back to Faerun? Would she blithely continue to be a thief? Was _that_ what the hells would make her?

No: she tossed the thoughts away from her, labeling them, like so many others, as irrelevant to the time and situation at hand. What she was left with, then, was a good plan – at least, good enough, considering how much she knew: faced with the reality of herself as a strong Shifter, she could find a way to survive through her Shifts, and once her base needs were met, she could begin to plot her revenge. And, eventually, to find her way out of Cania and back home.

_Revenge…_Now that she was thinking about it, thinking about Cay, her mind automatically leapt to the other thing that troubled her: her True Name. Caylassa had said it within her hearing, but she had not been compelled to obey. At all. Deekin had been forced to give up his very soul, and Valen forced to love the darkening beauty, but for her, for "Salazogan the Dragonspeaker"…nothing. It made little sense, but she thought that it was the key to surviving a battle with her – Caylassa could command her to roll over and die, if she had her True Name. But since something had gone wrong and her True Name had no effect on her…

She wanted to know _what_ happened, _why_ it didn't have a hold on her soul. But she didn't know where she would find the answer – the Knower of Names was gone somewhere, untraceable; she couldn't return to the Knower of Places to ask once more, not without the Puzzle Ring to show her the way and to open the planer door leading to the Knower's realm. And that had been given by Caylassa to said Knower of Names for the Reaper's True Name. _Talk about a vicious cycle! I need to find the Knower of Names to get the Puzzle Ring to find the Knower of Places to find the Knower of Names…_She shook her head as she stretched and padded back into her cave; that route was out. But what did that leave her with?

A puzzle. While she supposed she _could_ just accept the fact that her True Name 'didn't work,' she had a growing suspicion that something had occurred during Caylassa's conversation with the Knower of Names; the "companions", Valen and Deekin and her, had been barred from hearing, sent to stand some distance away so that they could only speculate what the two women were saying in low tones.

Before that moment, Caylassa had been drawn and taut by the strain of the Hells, but she had been _herself_, the same she had been in the Underdark and before that. And Kelia refused to believe that everything about her friend had been a lie. Perhaps there had been shadows in her, but everyone had shadows in their soul.

But after the conversation was done, when she turned to call them back so that the Knower of Names could transport them back to the City of Lost Souls, her eyes had been pained…and then they hardened, her face decided. At that moment, even if she had previously decided to rule this plane in Mephistopheles' absence, she had chose to put her companions through as much agony as possible.

Kelia thought – no, she _knew_ – something had happened in that conversation, something had been said….Something to turn Caylassa from what she had been to what she had become…but what? What was enough to make the golden haired female want to kill or imprison those that had always been loyal to her?

Just as she _could_ accept her True Name as not being hers, she _could_ accept the fact that Caylassa had been changed by that one conversation…but she wouldn't. She wanted to understand what had happened to her friend, how Caylassa had changed and why; not only would she soothe her mind – she would know what had happened to make the best and kindest fall – but she would also gain insight into the soul of the newest Dark Lady, the queen of the frozen Hell. And that insight would be invaluable when she had to spy and fight; it might even show a weakness.

She had to find a way to learn what had occurred during that conversation. But how? Caylassa surely wasn't speaking, and the Knower of Names was nowhere to be found – the only two who would know. She snarled and shook her head as she began to pace in the cave, from one rounded, smooth wall to the cracked one closest to the lava reservoir and back again. She was back where she started, but with more questions than before, and not an answer to any one of them. Back and forth, back and forth, her steps mirrored her thoughts. This point to this point to this point…and back to the beginning. _Where do I begin?_

**How**_ do I begin may be the better question…_she mused. Then, with a hard shake of her head, as if clearing her ears of water, she turned her attention to the physical needs once again. She could make this cave livable, and as she did, she could let the questions mull and mature, turning over and over until perhaps a new side was revealed. And a solution, she hoped. Or the start of one…So decided, she stuffed her questions back in the same place as her regained memories and her confusion as to who she was – to be dealt with at a more opportune moment, and not one second before.

_The name of the game's Survival, and Survival only…and Revenge, I suppose,_ she mused. _But will I win it, that is the question. Ah, what I wouldn't give to be a Knower right now…a Knower of the Future…Wait…_

Someone had once told her that there had been Knowers for everything, before the Devils came and took over Cania – names, places…would words and conversations fall under that as well? Would there still be a record? Who would know? She was in the Hells, after all…Knowledge was at a premium.

Her mind jumped to two people: the Sleeping Man, who had been here since before the City of Lost Souls was founded, and Arden Swift, the old tiefling bard in the Hellbreath Tavern. Either way, she would need to make the trip into the City of Lost Souls again…She wasn't looking forward to it. At all. Kelia knew she couldn't risk running into anyone who'd recognize her…that included all those she had passed on her journey. And who was to say that Caylassa wouldn't have spies or those loyal to her in that City? Her only advantage was that Caylassa had no idea she was still alive…Not much of an advantage. But if Caylassa found her, then she'd have none at all.

Although, she had to admit, even if Caylassa knew her to be alive, the dark queen would probably assume that she was still weak. And she wasn't. She would never be weak again. Still, care had to be given. She wanted nothing to go wrong – she would have one chance at killing Caylassa. She wanted to make it count.

So decided, she drew the top half of the bedroll over her, checked to be sure that her fur was as thick as she could make it, settled the bedroll over the warm whisper of air shooting up from the crack in the rock, laid her head down, and went to sleep.

* * *

A/N: For those curious, the things Kel fights are lemures...but of course she doesn't know what they're called... 


End file.
